I’m working on a PHP project and need to create a feature that shows unread emails from a Gmail account. I want to build something that can connect to Gmail and pull the unread messages to display them on my website.
I’m not sure which approach would work better for this. Should I go with POP3 or would IMAP be the right choice? I’ve heard both can work with Gmail but I’m confused about which one gives better results for reading unread emails.
I’m looking for a solution that’s easy to customize and implement. Has anyone done something similar before? What would be the best way to handle the Gmail connection and retrieve only the messages that haven’t been read yet?
Any code examples or guidance on the right protocol to use would be really helpful. I want to make sure I’m using the most reliable method for this kind of email integration.
Been through this exact scenario about two years back when building a client dashboard. Gmail’s threading behavior caught me off guard - messages in conversations can mess with your unread count if you don’t parse the message flags carefully. The IMAP UNSEEN flag is your friend here, but test thoroughly with different email clients since some mark messages as read just from previewing them. Also consider webhooks or push notifications if you need real-time updates instead of constantly polling the server. Google’s pub/sub API pushes notifications when new mail arrives, which beats hammering their servers every few minutes.
I’ve worked with PHP and Gmail quite a bit - IMAP is definitely the way to go for unread messages. It syncs with Gmail so when you mark emails as read, it updates on the server too. You’ll need to turn on IMAP in Gmail settings and use OAuth2 since Google killed basic auth. The PHP IMAP extension works, but I’d go with something like PHPMailer instead - it handles OAuth much cleaner. Watch out for Gmail’s rate limits though. I cache results and check for new messages every few minutes so I don’t get blocked.
oauth2 setup’s a pain initally, but it’s rock solid once u got it running. I went with google’s php api client instead of raw imap - token handling becomes way simpler. just make sure ur storing refresh tokens securely and deal with expired sessions properly, otherwise ur users will hate the constant re-auth popups.